Duckers & Diving: Ahoy there sailor!

THIS week our bewhiskered biro merchant has some celebrity gossip featuring a well-known Black Country marketing belle.

IS romance in the air for marketing darling Bev Weston?

The girl, who works for a Midland facilities management business – and formerly for Cradley Heath law firm George Green – is about to become a TV star in a new series called Brendan’s Love Cruise.

Yes, really. It is to be aired on More4 at 9.20am from December 2 to 27.

Let me give you a taste of the action.

When they were on ‘a nationwide hunt for single men and women aged 18-plus’ this is how they promoted it: “Are you single and looking for love? Have you got a sense of adventure? Do you fancy hopping aboard a free luxury cruise around the Mediterranean?

“This show is all about meeting great people, having fun in the sun and most importantly finding love on your holidays.”

So, our Bev, thought – I’ll have a bit of that, free holiday in the sun, plenty of hunk …and now she’s on the telly.

Atta babe!

Are we going to see lots of saucy fumblings between the sheets? Do we need to open a book on who’s going to be bonking who?

She insists it was actually “all very decent”.

No topless totty and certainly no cameras in the cabins. Two boats, each with 36 on board, 18 girls and 18 boys. Speed dating to the fore.

And, says Bev, some did actually find love.

Did she? “I can’t tell you that – you’ll have to watch.”

It lasted a week taking in the likes of Spain, Italy and Tunisia but it was off season – October.

“To be honest, I just did it for the free holiday,” she admits. “And there was a free bar too. I had a wonderful time. It was a real hoot.”

Not everyone stayed on for the duration because you could be made to ‘walk the plank’ as it were, but Bev completed the cruise.

No prize at the end – I guess they thought they had been generous enough.

It was Bev’s first time on TV – she saw the advert, applied, was interviewed over the phone, attended a casting session, and it was a case of welcome aboard the good ship Splendida.

All fronted by former tour guide turned ‘presenter’ Brendan Sheerin.

He is ‘famous’ for another reality TV show, Coach Trip – which is a bit like Brendan’s Love Cruise, but on land.

He acts as a conventional travel guide for the contestants, as commentator on their conduct and as coordinator of the venture.

So it is not exactly going to stretch the intelligence.

This is how the Richard Littlejohn recently described Coach Trip in his Daily Mail column.

“For the uninitiated, Coach Trip is, essentially, a rolling freak show, the worst kind of low-rent, exploitative, derivative TV tat. Think Big Brother on a bus.

“It brings together an assortment of drunks, losers, show-offs and tattooed Jade Goody wannabes on a modern day Jolly Boys’ Outing across Europe.”

Ooh, er, matron!

Gosh, wait until Littlejohn gets the hump with the Love Cruise revellers.

Beverley – what have you let yourself in for?